A chaos approach to tourism

Chaos theory and its companion model, complexity theory, are emerging as legitimate schools of thought to describe how complex systems function. This paper argues that tourism essentially functions as a chaotic, non-linear, non-deterministic system. As such, existing tourism models fail to explain fully the complex relationships that exist between and among the various elements that constitute a tourism system. The paper concludes by proposing an alternative model of tourism based on the principles of chaos theory that incorporates the nine elements that combine to explain how tourism functions. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.